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Simon Dale: How I built my hobbit house in Wales for just £3,000

Simon Dale: How I built my hobbit house in Wales for just £3,000
By Daily Mail Reporter Updated: 21:26 EDT, 21 September 2011 Fed up with huge mortgage payments, Simon Dale decided to take matters into his own hands – literally. Armed with only a chisel, a chainsaw and a hammer, the 32-year-old moved his family to a hillside in Wales and started digging. The result is a wooden eco-home – constructed in four months and costing just £3,000 – which would look perfectly at ease alongside the Hobbit houses in The Lord Of The Rings. Finished article: Simon Dale's family home which he built in four months for a cost of £3,000 Nestled: The moon rises on the house which is roofed with grass and blends in to its woodland surroundings Cosy home: The house is heated by a wood burner and a solar panel provides power Mr Dale, who has no experience in carpentry or architecture, created his sustainable family home using scrap wood for floors, materials scavenged from skips and by diverting water from a nearby spring. From scratch: Simon Dale building his 'hobbit house' Related:  ARCHITECTURE et NATURE

Beehive-Inspired Vertical Farm is a Self-Sufficient Mini Ecosystem for London Busy little London bees might love a chance to live in this green building set alongside the Thames and the London bridge, but it's actually meant for humans. Covered in foliage, this honeycomb tower is part vertical farm and part residential building combined to create a mini eco system. Fully self-sufficient, the London Tower Farm proposal by Mexican firm Xome Arquitectos collects its own rainwater, generates energy, and grows food for residents in the center of the building. Xome Arquitectos began their design based on the premise that by 2050 more than 70% of the world’s population will live in an urban environment. The tower’s facade was based on the strategy of carbon, life’s building block with the atomic number of 6. + Xome Arquitectos Via ArchDaily Images ©Efecto Veintiuno

Eco*Dome « Alter*Native ~ Holistic*Être La Terre c’est de l’Or dans les mains de l’homme sage ! Tout ce qui est carré est Terrestre, tout ce qui est rond est Céleste ! La terre est une matière première ! L’homme l’utilise comme matériau depuis des millénaires pour construire des maisons, même en France. Construire une maison en terre ? A l’encontre des idées reçues, ce système de construction est possible pratiquement partout. Voyage en ma Terre Première La terre possède une caractéristique unique : elle peut être mise en œuvre de façons très diverses. Nader Khalili, le père du concept des EcoDôme Nader Khalili, un architecte américain d’origine iranienne (il a fait ses études en Iran, en Turquie et aux USA), concevait à l’origine des gratte-ciel. Puis, suite à une demande de la NASA, il a élaboré un concept de maison pour les missions spatiales sur la lune, ceci en utilisant le matériau disponible localement : la poussière lunaire. Il reçoit le prix Aga Kahn d’Architecture en 2004. alors que dans les pays occidentaux, Source :

French architecture firm targets China’s pollution and population problems with cutting-edge ‘farmscrapers’  Solent News/Rex / Rex USA/Solent News/Rex / Rex USA French architecture firm Vincent Callebaut Architects has designed a series of six ‘farmscrapers,’ which they hope will go up in Shenzhen, China. To combat soaring population and pollution problems in China, a French architecture firm is looking up — and going green. Vincent Callebaut Architects has designed a series of six sky-high "farmscrapers," futuristic residential and business towers equipped with wind turbines and solar cells to create renewable energy. "Our view is to turn each constrain into an opportunity and convert waste into renewable natural resources," the company said in a statement. The eco-friendly castles in the sky, planned to go up in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, will measure 1,300 feet high and have 111 floors each. Solent News/Rex / Rex USA/Solent News/Rex / Rex USA Each of the ‘farmscrapers’ will be 1,300 feet tall and have 111 floors. Each pebble-shaped level houses a suspended garden on its exterior.

Retrofitting our Skyscrapers For Food and Power Nicolai Ouroussoff writes about all the new glass towers architects are designing in New York these days; they are lovely things, but what will power them or feed their occupants in years to come? Green roofs won't do it, they are too small. Daekwon Park has a great idea, seen in the 2008 Evolo skyscraper competition: a way to reunite the isolated city blocks and insert a multi-layer network of public space, green space and nodes for the city. Clipping onto the exterior of existing buildings, a series of prefabricated modules serving different functions would be stacked on top of each other, adding a layer of green space for gardening, wind turbines or social uses to make new green façades and infrastructures. There are modules for vertical gardens and connections to other buildings through a network of skywalks; Wind turbine units and program units that could serve many public functions.

Modern Underground Modern Underground Homes "As an architect, I'm ashamed of what my fellow professionals and I have done during the last fifty years. What do we do? Look around you: America's best land: destroyed, nature: crushed under buildings and parking lots, resources: squandered, energy: wasted. The saddest part is that we know better and still do nothing about it. We actually know how to build without destroying land." Malator Earth House in Druidston, Pembrokeshire, Wales, built in 1998 and designed by architects Future Systems for a former Member of Parliament. The roof of the Malator house is entirely covered in local grasses and the bulk of the home closely imitates the neighboring hills. Malator Earth House is barely noticable from the road. storiesofhouses.blogspot.com Villa Vals, Switzerland. Villa Vals, Switzerland. Aloni, Antiparos Island, Greece. Aloni, Antiparos Island, Greece. Edgeland House in Austin, Texas. Base Valley House, Japan. Base Valley House, Japan. Bolton Eco-House.

Nido de Quetzalcoatl - Javier Senosiain Estado de México 2007 El Proyecto arquitectónico se encontró con un terreno irregular de 5,000m2, con topografía muy accidentada, debido a que una cañada con encinos atraviesa el lugar longitudinalmente.Las cuevas fueron colapsadas por el fraccionador por la inseguridad de las mismas, lo que generó depresiones a cada lado de la cañada y en una de ellas una especie de cráter. Biomimétisme et Architecture | BiomimesisBiomimesis Voici un tableau regroupant des informations sur des projets en lien avec le biomimétisme dans un esprit de développement durable au sens large, c’est à dire œuvrant pour une réduction de l’empreinte des bâtiments sur l’environnement, agissant pour la préservation ou l’augmentation de la biodiversité. (voir aussi les lectures recommandées sur le thème sur Orgone Design. Les projets présentés ne se classent pas forcement dans l’approche biomimétique mais plutôt dans le bio-morphisme ou l’écologie. Projet de ferme vertical : Frei Otto concepteur du toit du stade olympique de Munich, qui met à profit la notion de surface minimale que l’on retrouve dans les structures des toiles d’araignées. voir également Paul Maymont (1926 à Paris – 20 mars 2007) Biomimicry in architecture and the start of the Ecological Age de Michael Pawlyn, revue de l’article ici (en anglais).

Shiberu Ban, Architecte japonais contemporain Shigeru Ban est né en 1957 à Tokyo. Il étudie d'abord au SCI-Arc (1977-1980) à Los Angeles, puis à la Cooper Union School of Architecture à New York de 1980 à 1982 et obtient son diplôme en 1984. De retour au Japon, il débute sa carrière à l'Atelier d'Arata Isozaki avant de fonder son agence en 1985. Son travail est aussitôt remarqué, et la scénographie saisissante qu'il réalise pour l'Exposition Emilio Ambasz à l'Axis Gallery (Tokyo, 1985) entièrement conçue à partir de tubes de carton, attire l'attention. Le carton répond aux contraintes des situations d’urgence, mais Shigeru Ban va aussi l’utiliser dans ses expérimentations sur la maison. Ses tubes de carton ont également été employés pour la réalisation du Pavillon japonais Paper Tube Structure 13 conçu avec le concours du Professeur Frei Otto à l'occasion de l'exposition universelle de Hanovre en 2000. Son maître Arata Isozaki parle de lui en ces termes:

Cité Végétale - Luc Schuiten Maisons plantes Terreform 1

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